Monday, February 19, 2018

Grounding the Fantasy of The
Apothecary’s Curse in Historical Authenticity

There's an old Paper Lace song from the '70s called "The Night Chicago
Died." It refers to the "east side" of Chicago.
Except. There IS no East Side of Chicago.
The East Side of Chicago is called Lake Michigan.
There's a North Side, a South Side, a Northwest Side and a West Side,
but no "East Side." Full stop. Always enjoyed
that song, but it always caused a snicker when, as kids, we would play (or
sing) the song.

The same is true for all fiction: novels, short stories, television scripts
and series. Nothing takes you out of a story faster than screwing up the
setting. Conversely, nothing grounds fiction better than a sense of
authenticity. And nothing provides authenticity better than knowing whereof and
who-of and how-of you speak.

In writing The Apothecary's Curse, I took great pains to research
every assertion, setting, and, yes, even, word I used. Was the word
"hooligan" in common use in 1837 London?
What did an apothecary do in London?
What was King James VI take on the supernatural back at the very end of the
sixteenth century.

There's a pivotal scene in The Apothecary's Curse where my main character
has a motorcycle accident north of Chicago
along the Lake Michigan coast. People who do not live in
Chicago (or perhaps some that do)
are often unaware that to the far north of the City, along the lake, the
terrain is far from the flatland with which Chicago
is often associated. There are high bluffs, deep ravines, plunging eighty, one
hundred, even one hundred fifty feet to the rocky shore. Who'd have thought?
I used the idea because I knew people would find it strange, and maybe a bit
fantastical (after all The Apothecary's Curse is a fantasy), but
before I put a number on the height of the cliff, I researched everything I
knew (and didn't know about the shoreline and the quite mystical ravines that
line the shore from Wilmette to the Wisconsin border).

Although I know the Chicago
setting quite well, and felt comfortable playing with it, the same is not true
of the early Victorian setting of 1837-1842 London.
I chose Smithfield Market as the location for Gaelan Erceldoune's Apothecary
Shop for some very specific reasons. Smithfield
is a place where the immortal Gaelan could be more or less anonymous. Having
moved locations after ten years in the posher environs of Hay Hill, he needs to
reboot his life, and Smithfield is
perfect. He's also needed there. Few physicians (mostly gentlemen) would dare
not dirty their hands in the "vile zoology" that is Smithfield (and
by the way, that is exactly how accounts for the time describe place, so I copped
the description and put into the story).

Also, Gaelan's heritage comes into play here (although not so much in
Apothecary's Curse as it will in the second book, which looks back on when
Gaelan first moved to Smithfield in 1826 (11 years before events in The
Apothecary's Curse). My research uncovered the fact that William Wallace
(AKA, The Wallace, a Scottish hero) was executed in Smithfield, perhaps even
right on the very same corner that Gaelan's shop sits. Hmm. So the locale was
very carefully chosen.

William Wallace was a contemporary and confederate of Lord Thomas Learmont
de Ercildoune, Gaelan's ancestor--a figure that is steeped in supernatural
legend, but who also existed in medieval Scotland!
History, meet mythology, meet fantasy!

So, by placing the fantasy in a real location with a real history related to
the ancestor of a historical figure, I hope that grounds the story in history
as well as the legend that so pervades the story.

I also underlaid the story with real people in cameos who lived during the
times in which the story takes place (or in its back story): Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle and his medical mentor Joseph Bell
(who is related to Gaelan's frenemy Simon Bell),
Sir Isaac Newton, Paracelsus (though only indirectly). There is also a scene
midway through the novel in which I wanted to trigger an argument between
Gaelan (who's always up for a good verbal row) and Simon's cousin Dr. James
Bell.

I had a particular date in 1842 in mind, so I scoured the London Times
from July 1842 and came up with the perfect news item: an assassination attempt
on Queen Victoria by a mentally
and physically disabled, shunned little man. Gaelan, of course, would side with
the disabled man, who, after all shot paper "bullets" at the queen.

All of this is to say that no matter whether you're writing historical
fiction (for which accuracy is an imperative when dealing in the
"actual" factual world) or speculative fiction, everything has to
make sense (at least within the world you've built. And if the world you've built
is fantastical, but set (even partially) in the real world, attention to
detail, gentle use of tropes, diction, setting--and fact, can give your
fantastical creation an air of authenticity.

And, if you are interested in reading The Apothecary's Curse, you
can find it at your local booksellers, Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble or local library. If you've
read it, I would of course appreciate a kind word on Goodreads or Amazon :) And
be sure to visit my website and sign up (in the right sidebar) for my mailing
list.
You can follow me on Twitter @B_Barnett

About the Author

Barbara Barnett is author of the Bram Stoker Award-nominated novel The
Apothecary’s Curse(Pyr Books), an imprint of Prometheus Books. She is also
Publisher/Executive Editor of Blogcritics
Magazine (blogcritics.org), an online magazine of pop culture,
politics and more, for which she has also contributed
nearly 1,000 essays, reviews, and interviews over the past decade. She
published in-depth interviews with writers, actors and producers, including
Jane Espenson, Katie Jacobs, Doris Egan, David Goodman, Jesse Spencer, Jennifer
Morrison, Robert Carlyle, Lana Parilla, David Strathairn, Russel Friend,
Garrett Lerner, Elie Atie, Wesley Snipes, and many, many more.
Her book on the TV series House, M.D., Chasing Zebras: THE Unofficial
Guide to House, M.D. is a critically-acclaimed and quintessential guide to
the themes, characters and episodes of the hit show.
Always a pop-culture and sci-fi geek, Barbara was raised on a steady diet of
TV (and TV dinners), but she always found her way to the tragic antiheroes and
misunderstood champions, whether on TV, in the movies or in literature. (In
other words, Spock, not Kirk; Han Solo, not Luke Skywalker!) It was inevitable
that she would have to someday create one of her own.
She is an accomplished speaker, an annual favorite at MENSA’s HalloWEEM
convention, where she has spoken to standing room crowds on subjects as diverse
as “The Byronic Hero in Pop Culture,” “The Many Faces of Sherlock Holmes,” “The
Hidden History of Science Fiction,” and “Our Passion for Disaster (Movies).”
Most recently, she gave a lecture at MENSA “The Conan Doyle Conundrum,”
which explored the famous author’s life-long belief in fairies.
Barbara is available for signings and other author appearances as well as
radio, print and television interviews. She also loves to speak at writers and
other conferences! Feel free to
contact her directly!
She is represented by Katharine Sands at the Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency in
New York City. You can reach
Katharine at katharinesands@nyc.rr.com.

WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:

Between magic and science, medicine and
alchemy, history and mythology lies the Apothecary's Curse…

A 2017 finalist for the prestigious Bram
Stoker Award and winner of the Reader’s Choice award at this year’s Killer
Nashville, The Apothecary’s Curse is a complex tale of love and survival set in
a very different Victorian era where science and the supernatural co-exist. The
Apothecary’s Curse transports readers between Victorian London and contemporary
Chicago, where two men conceal their immortality….

In early Victorian London, the fates of
gentleman physician Simon Bell and apothecary Gaelan Erceldoune become
irrevocably bound when Simon gives his dying wife an elixir created by Gaelan
from an ancient manuscript. Meant to cure her of cancer, instead, it kills her.
Now suicidal, Simon swallows the remainder – to no apparent effect. Five years
of suicide attempts later, Simon realizes he cannot die. When he hears rumors
of a Bedlam inmate—star attraction of a grisly freak show with astounding
regenerative powers like his own—Simon is shocked to discover it is Gaelan.

When Machiavellian pharmaceutical company
Genomics unearths 19th Century diaries describing the torture of Bedlam
inmates, Gaelan and Simon's lives are upended, especially when the company's
scientists begin to see a link between Gaelan and one of the unnamed inmates.
But Gaelan and Genomics geneticist Anne Shawe find themselves powerfully,
almost irresistibly, drawn to each other, and her family connection to his
remarkable manuscript leads to a stunning revelation.

Will it bring ruin or redemption?

Meticulous historical detail infuses the
narrative with authenticity, providing a rich, complex canvas. And playing off
Simon’s connection to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Apothecary’s Curse draws on
both the Sherlock Holmes canon and Sir Arthur's spirituality, as well as Celtic
mythology, the art of alchemy, and the latest advances in genetics research.